Points of Order
Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts(1 year, 4 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I shall also add my words to that. The right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) is an experienced Member, and I am sure that he will use Question Time, Adjournment debates and the statements that we will inevitably have in future to put on the record his disgust and his feelings of unity with the people of Ukraine.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have repeatedly raised the anguish that my constituents, the parents of Chloe Rutherford and Liam Curry, are going through. Chloe and Liam were murdered in the Manchester Arena terror attack. Archaic law in relation to terror attacks prevents my constituents, and all other grieving parents, from registering their precious children’s deaths. Instead, the registration will be done by a registrar—a complete stranger to the family.
I first raised this matter in March with the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. Since then, I and the parents have had ministerial meetings. I have constantly raised their distress in this Chamber, held an Adjournment debate, submitted two early-day motions and sent countless letters and emails. Time and again, the then Home Office Minister responsible promised that a decision on changing the legislation was imminent. The final inquiry report into the attack is due in January. That is when the children’s deaths will have to be registered.
Since the beginning of September, Home Office Ministers and the two Secretaries of State for Justice have completely ignored my correspondence—that is until this afternoon when they asked me not to raise this point of order. Mr Deputy Speaker, why do my constituents have to suffer because this Government are not fit to govern and cannot get their act together? Please can you advise me how on earth we are supposed to get an answer from those on the Treasury Bench before January?
Mr Deputy Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Member for indicating that she was going to raise this matter. I am sure that all Members will wish to express their sympathies for her constituents. She has clearly pursued this important issue with tenacity. Indeed, I have been in the Chair and heard her raise this issue before. Everybody here understands why she wants this matter resolved. Ministers on the Treasury Bench will have heard her comments. Let me say that again: Ministers on the Treasury Bench will have heard her comments, and I hope that they will be able to respond to her speedily.
Oral Answers to Questions
Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts(2 years, 1 month ago)
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George Freeman
My right hon. Friend makes an important point, which I would be keen to talk to him about. Although that is a Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport lead, we are tightening up on the intellectual property provisions, and we are minded to proceed with that legislation.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
Unscrupulous employers have used the pandemic to slash their loyal workforce’s terms and conditions and threaten them with the sack. Court cases have been lost by Uber and more recently by Tesco, yet all we have from this Government are platitudes. They have done absolutely nothing to stop brutal fire and rehire practices. Will the Government’s much-fabled Employment Bill finally ban them once and for all?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)
This Government have been really clear that such practices should not be used as bully-boy negotiating tactics. Employers should refer to the strengthened ACAS guidance that sets out that dismissal and re-engagement should be considered only as an option of last resort.
Oral Answers to Questions
Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Greg Hands
I thank my hon. Friend for his continual engagement on this issue. He will know that I met his colleagues in the OffSET group of MPs—the Off Shore Electricity Grid Task Force—very recently. On the offshore transmission network review, Ofgem has consulted on options for delivery models for offshore connections, including a regulated asset base approach. There continues to be ongoing work, and I am looking forward to meeting my hon. Friend at the next meeting of OffSET, or individually.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
Under this Government, the gig economy workforce has trebled in the last five years, fire and rehire is accepted, zero-hours contracts are supported, inadequate sick pay is ignored, and sanctions for non-payment of the minimum wage are absolutely pitiful. Why, then, did the Government ditch their own employment Bill and block the private Member’s Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner)?
Paul Scully
The UK has one of the best employment rights records in the world. We have made good progress in bringing forward measures that add flexibility for workers while ensuring the protection of employment rights, such as banning the use of exclusivity clauses in zero-hours contracts and legislating to extend the right to a written statement of core terms of employment to all workers. We will continue to make sure that we consider options to improve clarity on employment status, and we will bring forward an employment Bill as soon as parliamentary time allows.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab) [V]
Last week, the Chancellor spoke of being fair and honest with the public, yet 24 hours later it became very clear that he was doing neither. The worst example of that was the cowardly omission of the real-terms pay cut for our NHS heroes, people who have put their lives on the line day in and day out, who diligently turned up to save lives knowing that the Government had not provided them with PPE, and who have been the only comfort for strangers as they took their final breaths. They have been told that the public finances are under strain. This pitiful excuse might wash if they had not seen £37 billion wasted on failing test and trace, if they had not heard the Conservative head of that failed programme defending wasting tens of thousands of pounds per day on consultants to help run this shambles, if they had not seen nearly £2 billion given to Tory friends and donors for covid-related contracts, or the half a billion spent on the Nightingales that did little more than provide some good PR for a poorly performing Health Secretary.
The fact is that the Government do not value our NHS. Their Benches are filled with those who vote time and again to cut the NHS and its workforce to the bone, forcing local hospitals to downgrade and promoting a privatised system of health and social care. It is not just the NHS they show disdain for, however. It is also whole communities who do not vote for them or share their ethos. It was noticed by people in South Shields and our surrounding areas that last week’s Budget offered zero investment in our infrastructure, jobs, schools or high streets. Levelling up is already proving itself to be as vacuous as the northern powerhouse was.
We are smart enough to see through the soundbites, the slogans and the rhetoric. When it comes to the levelling up fund, typically there is a lack of clarity regarding the formula and criteria for making the awards. What is clear, however, is that these funds will pit communities and regions against each other. At a time when we should be coming together, the Tories are again sowing division and fostering competition for small pots of money that will see a piecemeal and unequal recovery across our country.
For our local economies to survive they need local people with money to spend, yet just as unemployment is due to peak later this year, the universal credit uplift will be scrapped. Legacy benefits remain static, the benefit cap and the two-child limit remain, council tax is rising and key worker pay is frozen.
Our communities will never forget that, in the middle of a pandemic, this Government presided over one of the highest death tolls in the world, led us to the worst economic crisis of any major economy and used it as an opportunity to make money for them, their friends and donors. We will all have to live with the scars of this Government’s recklessness for decades to come and I will never give them a minute’s peace over it.
Oral Answers to Questions
Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Paul Scully
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. We will always look for and listen to suggestions on how we can improve schemes, and I will continue to work with Treasury colleagues to reflect that.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister for Business, Energy and Clean Growth (Kwasi Kwarteng)
We know that certain areas of the economy have faced enormous challenges this year, and that is why the Government have provided an unprecedented range of support packages to help businesses precisely to continue trading.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
Wet pubs in South Shields spent money making themselves covid-secure, only to have an arbitrary curfew imposed on them and then to be forced to close completely, yet there is no evidence at all that they are contributing to the spread of the virus. This was a policy, not a health decision. I heard the Minister’s earlier response, but if the Government really do not want to see our pub doors closed forever, why have they not listened to the requests from the British Beer and Pub Association and uplifted the current grants on offer?
Kwasi Kwarteng
As the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), has suggested, there is a considerable measure of support for pubs that are suffering at the moment. And as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care said, there is a clear medical, epidemiological reason for pursuing the policies that we have done.
Oral Answers to Questions
Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Nadhim Zahawi
We have, as the hon. Member rightly mentioned, consulted on bringing forward the end to the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans from 2040 to 2035, or earlier if a fast transition appears feasible, as well as including hybrids for the first time. We will announce the outcome in due course. I remind him that we are investing £2.5 billion in grants for plug-in passenger commercial vehicles and more than 18,000 publicly available charging devices, including 3,200 rapid devices: one of the largest networks in Europe. I want to see him supporting that endeavour rather than talking it down.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)
Ministerial colleagues and I have engaged closely with affected sectors throughout the covid-19 pandemic. Recently, I have had meetings with representatives of the retail, hospitality, consumer goods, weddings, nightclubs and events sectors, and small and medium-sized enterprises across the UK.
Mrs Lewell-Buck [V]
I thank the Minister for his response, but it is simply not good enough. My local pubs, bars, restaurants, theatres and taxi drivers were already fighting for their survival. The introduction of an arbitrary and unevidenced 10 pm curfew has led one of my constituents, Stephen Sullivan, who runs Ziggy’s in South Shields, to say, “I simply can’t see a way forward. There is no way out for my business.” When on earth will the Government abolish this curfew?
Paul Scully
I am sorry that the hon. Member does not feel that speaking to 3,000 or 4,000 businesses over the past few months to understand their issues is good enough. None the less, I understand the concern of the hospitality sector and other sectors in South Shields in particular, where there are local restrictions. It is so important that we get the economy up and running as soon as we can. The Government’s first priority is to save lives, but to save businesses and livelihoods is just as important.